Archaeometry & Materials Analysis (Other Keyword)
326-350 (357 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Culture Contact and Diversity in Southern Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Camelid pastoralism was an economic mainstay of the Tiwanaku Empire (~AD 600-1000). Communities of colonists in Moquegua, Peru were connected to their Tiwanaku capital near Lake Titicaca through an informal trade route traversing the altiplano. One component of Tiwanaku hegemony involved the movement of goods via llama caravans...
The Toltec Diaspora as Political Action (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological chronologies and material-culture evidence indicate large-scale migrations of Nahua peoples to eastern Mesoamerica in the ninth and tenth centuries CE linked to the collapse of the Toltec state at Tula Chico in about 850 CE. This event...
Tools Fit for a Queen: Interdisciplinary Study of a Set of Ancient Maya Weaving Implements (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reviews our interdisciplinary study examining a set of carved deer bones comprising what appears to be a weaving or sewing kit for an ancient Maya royal woman bearing the Sa’ emblem glyph associated with...
Traces of Integration: A Study of Early Colonial Ware by Imagenology Methods (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The capital of the Tarascan empire was located in Tzintzuntzan (Michoacán, Mexico), which reached its peak during the Late Postclassic (AD 1350–1525). At the time of contact, there was an almost unique continuous transition, showing a historical process of long duration, where different traditions converged. Among the...
Tracing Late Quaternary Highland-Dryland Social Connectivity in Southern Africa with Ostrich Eggshell Bead Strontium Values: Preliminary Results (2018)
Humans have frequented southern Africa’s highest reaches – Lesotho’s Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains – for ≥90,000 years. As with many high mountain systems worldwide, the Maloti-Drakensberg cast a rainshadow over closely neighboring arid lowlands (the eastern Karoo Desert). Based on previous archaeological and paleoenvironmental work in highland Lesotho, researchers have posited that source populations for human dispersals into the mountain zone often originated in the Karoo, particularly during...
Tracking Paleoaridity through Multi-isotope Analyses of Ostrich Eggshells at Spitzkloof Rockshelter A, South Africa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotopes in ratite eggshells record information about the birds’ diet during shell formation, making them valuable proxies for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Here we present the results of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen stable isotope analyses in ostrich (Struthio camelus australis) eggshell (OES) collected in excavation at Spitzkloof A, a rock...
Trade And Production of Steatite Vessels in New England (2018)
This research examines the trade and production of steatite vessels during the Archaic Period in New England. The study focuses specifically on a quarry Located in Barkhamsted, Connecticut where recent excavation has supplemented prior investigations from 1949 to 1951. The material from this site is located at Yale’s Peabody Museum and the archaeology lab at Central Connecticut State University. We also examine the artifact assemblages from other sites in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Along...
The Trade of Tortoiseshell between the Caribbean and Europe during the 17th–18th Centuries: An Archaeological and Biomolecular Approach (2018)
Tortoiseshell is made from the scutes of sea turtles; historically, hawksbill turtle was the main source of tortoiseshell but other species might have been used. Between the 17th and 18th c. tortoiseshell obtained in the Caribbean was traded on North American and European markets. Tortoiseshell was used for making combs, fans, boxes, in bookbinding, and as veneering for furniture. Excavations in European workshops (Paris and Amsterdam) attest of the use of this exotic material into luxurious...
Tradition and Transformation during the Middle Horizon to LIP Transition: Visual and Compositional Analyses of Tumilaca and Estuquiña Pottery in the Moquegua Valley, Peru (2018)
In many Andean regions, the shift from the Middle Horizon to the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP, is archaeologically identified by stylistic changes. In the Moquegua valley, southern Peru, LIP (ca. AD 1250-1476) Estuquiña architecture and portable material culture is starkly different from that associated with terminal Middle Horizon (ca. AD 950-1200) Tumilaca populations. Until recently Tumilaca settlements were thought to have been completely abandoned prior to the appearance of Estuquiña...
Trans-Himalayan Material Culture of India: Special Reference to Steatite Bead (2018)
Trans-Himalayan archaeology was always neglected by the historians and Archaeologist. But some recent excavations and my Ph.D field work presented an interesting view of Trans-Himalayan culture. The burial culture of this region dated back to 600-200BCE. I found here the remains of Pyro-technological activities. Steatite bead was first time found in Trans-Himalaya. They are in size from 2 to 4 mm in diameter, 1to3 mm in height, and hole width is about 1 mm. The beads were examined by using SEM...
Transition and Resilience: Commoner Occupation in the Rio Amarillo East Pocket of the Copan Valley during the Postclassic Period (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Pre-Columbian Cultures of Honduras after AD 900" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent and ongoing research at residential groups at the sites of Río Amarillo and Quebrada Piedras Negras is providing a better understanding of the lives of commoners and of the population dynamics during the latter part of the Late Classic through the Postclassic Period. These sites share the second-widest pocket of the Copan River...
Trek Up the River: A Cobble Tool Technology as Clue to Interior California's Antiquity (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An early quartzite cobble lithic technology is evidenced by a multi-site pattern of datasets including waste cores and tools with highly patinated flake scars on remains deeply embedded in the natural desert pavement of the Pleistocene shorelines along the Lower Colorado River (LCR). Reduction technology is represented at Vista del Lago (CA-SBr-1456) located...
Tribute from the Underworld: The Historical Ecology of the Maya Postclassic Fish Trade with Otoliths from Mayapán and Caye Coco (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary results are presented for the analysis of fish otoliths from the Maya Postclassic sites of Mayapán in Mexico, and Caye Coco in Belize. Fish otoliths are used investigate seasonality of fish harvest for the inland fish trade, and to contrast the diversity, trophic levels, and population structure of fish between both the archaeology sites, and...
Una perspectiva sobre el empleo del barro cocido en el beneficio del cobre: Caso de Jicalán Viejo, Michoacán (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Jicalán Viejo, es uno de los sitios prehispánicos donde se han encontrado vestigios de escoria metálica asociada al proceso metalúrgico del cobre. Al igual que las escorias, el barro utilizado en la manufactura de...
Unexpected Expertise: Archaeological Science and the Creative Skills of Indus Craftspeople (2018)
Wright’s doctoral and subsequent work brilliantly employed archaeological science to show how relatively simple technological tools (single-chamber kilns) were used by skilled craftspeople in clever ways to create surprisingly technologically complex objects (black-on-grey pottery, resulting from several different cycles of atmospheric conditions during firing), objects which also provided information about patterns of social boundaries and technological style. In homage to this work, we will...
Unveiling the Artisan Secrets of the Lapidary Goods from the Great Temple of the Aztecs (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies have demonstrated that the cultural provenance and diversity of the goods found in the offerings from the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan are more complex than the archaeologists thought, overlapping their acquisition by tribute, exchange, war prizes, or looting. In the case of the...
Using Compound Specific Isotope Analysis of Amino Acids to Distinguish Aquatic and Terrestrial Diets of Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Sweden (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we present the results of compound specific carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on amino acids from bone collagen of Early Holocene humans and contemporaneous terrestrial and marine fauna recovered from multiple sites in southern Sweden. These analyses were aimed at individuals spanning the Early Mesolithic to the Middle Neolithic Pitted...
Using Faunal Stable Isotopes to Assess Past Hunting Practices and Landscape Modification Along the Feather River, CA (2018)
Isotopic studies of faunal remains provide an ecological framework from which to interpret human behavior, including diet, subsistence, settlement, and mobility. In this study, we present isotopic analysis of four well-dated sites that span a 3500-year record along the Feather River, the biggest tributary of the Sacramento River located in Northern Central California. Through carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur stable isotopes we explore the effects of human population growth on the type(s) of browse...
Using Lithic Conveyance to Reconstruct Paleoindian Cultural Landscapes in the Great Basin (2018)
Archaeologists commonly use the geographic patterning of sourced artifacts to understand how prehistoric cultures used their landscapes, yet exactly what this patterning indicates remains unclear. The Paleoindian literature reflects a tendency to assume that toolstone conveyance reflects direct acquisition (i.e., mobility) motivated by subsistence and technological concerns, rather than acquisition (i.e., exchange) motivated by social concerns. Yet the challenge of actually distinguishing...
Using Surface Roughness to Identify Heat Treatment in Lithic Technology (2018)
The heat treatment of stone to enhance flaking attributes was an important advancement in the adaptive toolkit of early humans. The earliest evidence for this is the heat treatment of silcrete 164 ka at the Middle Stone Age site Pinnacle Point 13B in South Africa. Heating stone prior to knapping alters the physical and chemical composition of the stone, and it has long been recognized that flaked heat-treated stone has a glossier surface. We expect this glossiness to result from a smoother...
Using Traditional and Nontraditional Isotopic Tracers of Diet and Mobility of Brazilian Shell Mound Populations (ca. 8000–1000 years BP) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of shell mounds can shed light on human occupation and adaptations at coastal environments worldwide. In South America, human groups occupied the territory close to the Atlantic Ocean for millennium (ca. 8000 to ⁓1000 years BP), building hundreds of shell mounds, some with impressive dimensions. After 2000 BP, it is assumed that these populations...
Valle de Bonanza (Zacatecas, Mexico): Desert Varnish and Technology in a Surface Lithic Assemblage (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Valle de Bonanza (northeast of the Mexican state of Zacatecas) is a surface-only archaeological site located in a highly eroded desert landscape on the edges of a vast endorheic basin in Concepcion del Oro county. The site consists of a sand-and-dust surface affected by intensive deflation that caused the formation of a palimpsest of crudely made flaked stone...
Variation in 5βstanols Excretion in Humans and Its Implications for the Application of Fecal Biomarkers in Archaeology (2018)
Fecal biomarkers have proven to be a valuable tool to identify the likely source of fecal matter and have successfully been applied in archaeology. They provide direct evidence of the digestive physiology and diet of the source, and critical data to assess the origin of fecal deposits. 5βstanols can be used as fecal biomarkers because they uniquely form in the gut of higher mammals during metabolic reduction of sterols. However, the actors of this microbial conversion still have to be elucidated...
Vibrant Recipes: The Variability and Composition of Special Clay Linings in Mississippian Shrines from the Illinois Uplands of Greater Cahokia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In several Mississippian sites circa 1050 CE, shrine houses and some other features were lined with a special bright yellow clay or clay mixture. This study looks at the variability and composition of these clay linings to determine what is the key vibrant ingredient in these ceremonially active clay linings. In this study methods of texture analysis, X-Ray...
Virgin Branch Puebloan Adaptations on the Colorado Plateau: Recent Excavations at Granary House (AZ A:14:46) (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The upper reaches of the Virgin Branch Puebloan region—particularly, the western Colorado Plateau—has largely remained understudied, partly resulting from difficulties accessing many areas yielding cultural activity. While the majority of data collection has been amassed through surveys, excavations on the western Colorado Plateau have significantly broadened...